


Arsenal

by alanharnum



Category: Shoujo Kakumei Utena | Revolutionary Girl Utena
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-27
Updated: 2017-12-27
Packaged: 2019-02-22 14:56:52
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,188
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13169316
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alanharnum/pseuds/alanharnum
Summary: Arsenal deals most immediately with events of episodes 28 and 29 (the Ruka episodes), but contains spoilers (some more oblique than others) for the series as a whole. Not my favourite among my Utena stories; like The Graduates, I was not able to work out the idea in my head on "paper" in such a way as to sufficiently convey it.





	Arsenal

Shoujo Kakumei Utena

ARSENAL

by

Alan Harnum

This copy of the story is from my Archive of Our Own page at http://archiveofourown.org/users/alanharnum/pseuds/alanharnum.

Spoilers for the whole series, some more direct than others.

* * *

Juri-san. Scratched that out: a single horizontal line, straight  
as though drawn with a ruler. Dear Juri. That would not do  
either: up, down, peaks and valleys of elimination. Beloved Juri  
fell to a swirl of pen strokes, a tangled cumuli of ink that  
erased it completely. His arm had already begun to grow tired.  
"The pen is mightier than the sword"--but soon enough, he would  
not have the strength to wield either.

White: white walls, white ceiling, white tiles, white  
curtains, white sheets, white gown, white tubes, white flesh, and  
beyond the windows, white clouds in a blue sky, drifting. The  
soft, soft white fluorescence of the rectangles of light  
observing from overhead. If he closed his eyes and squinted,  
they seemed to merge and blur into one another, a long pale road.

A nurse came and brought him a meal he could not eat. He  
hid pad and pen beneath his pillow so that she would not see it.  
If they knew he was trying to write, they would take it away from  
him; he did not know this for certain, but he feared the  
possibility. The thought occurred to him that even if he could  
complete the letter (and so far he could not even find the right  
means of address) he had no means of delivering it to her. He  
dismissed it. "Love finds a way." Man in his dying comforts  
himself with trite platitudes.

Outside in the hallway there was the familiar sound:  
footsteps, then a pause to check a room number, then footsteps,  
then pause again. They would pass his room by. They always  
passed his room by.

They did not. The doorknob of his room began to turn. He  
hid the pad and pen again. The Rose Bride entered and closed the  
door behind her--he lacked the strength to show surprise. She  
bowed, and greeted him formally: "Tsuchiya-sempai."

"What do you want?"

She came to stand beside his bed; he turned his head away  
and solemnly regarded the wall. A small dark girl in a white-  
and-teal uniform. He wondered if anyone else felt the same  
chills he did; her demure menace.

"I was very sorry to hear that you had been forced to  
return to the hospital," she said after a moment. "It's  
unfortunate that you had a relapse."

"Don't." He addressed the wall rather than her.

"Don't?"

"Don't play games with me. I'm not interested. I won't  
play them."

"Games?"

With some effort, he turned over onto his side and regarded  
her evenly. "I am well aware of what you are. I understand that  
you've chosen her as your champion, whatever your brother's  
desires in the matter may be. So why bother with this  
deception?"

Behind her spectacles, the bride's glassy eyes closed, and  
she raised a hand to her mouth as though to--unsuccessfully--  
contain the escaping giggle.

"Oh, sempai," she said between titters, "you understand  
nothing at all."

"Don't I?" he said; he tried to snarl the words, imagined  
them coming away from his lips menacing and cold. They emerged  
like the plaintive mewling of a hungry kitten.

"What were you writing, sempai?" she asked. "A letter? A  
diary entry? A suicide note? Which one was it this time?"

Her eyes were open again, and regarded him, thorn-coloured.

"This time?"

She reached up with both hands and removed her glasses. The  
arms made small sharp clicks as she folded them against the  
frames. Carefully, precisely, she placed the glasses on his  
bedside table, turning away from him as she did. When she turned  
back, she seemed taller.

"I've seen it all before," she said quietly, staring over  
his bed and out the window at the tangled skeins of the clouds.  
"I'll see it all again. It's perfectly understandable. Of  
course you want her to believe your interpretation of the  
matter, that you knew what you were doing right from the very  
beginning, and were willing to make her hate you to set her  
free, that all you did was intended to lead inevitably to Dios's  
sword slicing that locket from her neck."

"I knew what I was doing," he hissed.

She nodded, slowly. Her hands pulled the pins from her  
hair, and it dropped down her back in a long dark wave. "Perhaps  
you did," she agreed. "But you see, Tsuchiya-sempai, in this  
world, that isn't as important as what others think you were  
doing. There are so many other ways to see it. Someone else,  
for example, someone who isn't you--perhaps someone like her--  
might think about it in hindsight, and see the actions of a  
selfish, petty, jealous boy, willing to hurt anyone in his path  
in the hopes of seizing the power that he hoped would grant him  
the love she'd deny him in this world. Really, to talk about  
'love' can be so misleading, because there's so many different  
meanings to the word; who was at the centre of your love's world,  
Tsuchiya-sempai? Was it you, or her?"

"I was willing to die for her."

"And you would have died anyway," she said calmly. "Why not  
risk everything, manipulate anyone, if the chance existed that  
you could reach the world you desire?"

"She's free now, isn't she?"

"By her own strength, and certainly not by your hands. You  
would have removed her chains and replaced them with new ones;  
you didn't want the locket broken, you simply wanted your picture  
in it. It was never about her, Tsuchiya-sempai; it was all about  
you. What you desired, what you despised. Isn't that true?"

He searched for words, and could not find them.

"Do you understand now?" she asked softly, after his silence  
had filled the room to the point where it seemed the walls might  
crack and fall away. He might almost have dared to call her  
voice kind. She expertly loosened a knot, and the red-and-yellow  
scarf of her uniform blouse fluttered to the broad white tiles of  
the floor. "In this world, truth is made; it isn't something  
that just is, something that someone can pick up and look at and  
say 'so that's what it is!'. Do you understand my meaning?"

"Of course I do," he said. He turned his head and laid it  
on the pillow, staring up at the ceiling. "But I don't care to  
speak to you any more of this, Bride of the Rose. Have you some  
business of your brother's to discuss with me?"

"I have come on my own business." He heard the rustle of  
cloth, saw flesh and dark curves out of the corner of his eye;  
the pout of a nipple. "You are a special case. I see that  
you're still wearing your ring."

He tried to raise his left hand so that he might regard it,  
and could not manage even that. His entire body felt numb, as  
though he floated in iced water.

"Do you know what happens to the ring of a Duellist when  
they die?"

His tongue was a fat, sluggish thing, alien in his mouth,  
terrifying; he tried to spit it out, had not the strength.

"I came to offer a choice, as is my right as Bride of the  
Rose; as is my duty and burden. How do you want her to remember  
you, Tsuchiya-sempai? How do you want to be remembered? Modern  
medicine is remarkable; it can keep someone alive long after they  
should have died. Perhaps she'll come to visit you, and she'll  
read your letters, remember you with pity, with remorse for what  
you became because you loved her; she'll tell herself she  
understands how you became twisted from the man she admired and  
respected, but never loved, never could have loved. And you'll  
waste away, the years piling up like grains of sand falling into  
the bottom of an hourglass, passing by like the ticks of a clock,  
and eventually, eventually you'll die, and she'll want to believe  
all the self-justifying letters and diary entries and suicide  
notes, but she's too intelligent to ever bring herself to really  
believe them."

She fell silent, and seemed to be waiting for something. He  
struggled. There were tears in his eyes, salty, stinging. Damn  
her, damn him, damn her strength and his weakness.

"No," he managed finally; hardly even a whisper. He was  
amazed when she nodded and appeared to have heard him, or perhaps  
she had simply known exactly how he would respond, had known from  
the very beginning.

"There is another choice," she said, standing naked and  
terrible at his bedside, her hair moving of its own volition like  
a nest of snakes. "I can offer it, but you must take it freely.  
It will be exactly how you want it to be: you'll be the one who  
wanted to give the Power of Miracles to the one you loved, and  
set her free."

Somehow, he managed to string together the right words: "But  
will it be that way, or will that just be the way she sees it?"

She inclined her head to one side and regarded him for a  
moment. "I suppose whether or not that matters depends on what  
you think truth is," she said finally.

Saying nothing more, she raised the index finger of her left  
hand to the valley between her breasts, dimpling the flesh with a  
long nail. As he watched, she calmly drew it downwards, slitting  
herself open from breastbone to navel, before taking her hands  
and peeling the skin back so that it hung in wrinkles about the  
gaping opening into her body. Within she was a tangle of light  
and dark, from which the clangourous sounds of metal shifting on  
metal emanated like a vapour.

"The offer is made," she said quietly. "The offer is  
taken." There were tears in her eyes, though perhaps merely ones  
of pain.

The tingling numbness in his entire body became, instantly,  
stabbing fires. He arched, stiffened, screamed; the fires ran  
through his bones and veins, gathering towards a single point  
in his breast. Indescribable agony. His limbs flopped and  
flailed, then lay still. A mountain lay upon his chest; moments  
later, every part of his body except his heart was nonexistent.  
He was merely a beating heart, his universe defined by its  
chambers. Then he saw again, as he was thrust through a long  
soundless tunnel, utterly black, and at the end of it, radiant,  
was the face of the Rose Bride, smiling and beckoning to him.

As he approached, it became other faces, passed through its  
changes like the changings of the moon: the determined face of  
the Engaged One, Tenjou Utena; the cruel sneer of Kiryuu Nanami;  
the slight pretty face of the girl Juri loved, twisted by  
weeping; then, finally, inevitably, Juri's face. Juri's beloved  
face, regarding him with pity and contempt.

"Witch!" he cried, realizing that he was lost. "Damnable  
witch--"

Her hell-mouth gaped, and he fell within.

* * *

When it was finished, she rose up from the floor and calmly  
dressed herself. She pinned her hair back up and put her glasses  
back on. On the bed, the body lay, calm except for the left arm  
flopped over the railing. After removing the blackened Rose  
Signet from the ring finger, she arranged it so that it was  
symmetrical with the other limb, and stepped back. The Signet  
went into the pocket of her blouse.

Turning to the bedside table, she lifted the handset of the  
phone and dialled. Two rings, and then the other end picked up.

"It's me."

"Is it done?"

"It's done."

"Did you get his ring?"

"I have his ring."

"Good. You'll be home soon?"

"Soon."

She hung up and turned to the wall, where her shadow lay.

"Go," she said, gesturing towards the closed door of the  
room. A second shadow detached itself from hers, pirouetted with  
joy at its freedom, then slid beneath the door and into the  
hallway beyond; another, near-identical, followed it moments  
later. She regarded her own shadow for a moment, then turned  
from it and walked to the window to stare down upon the tree-  
lined path below.

After some time, a girl emerged from the hospital, proceeded  
down the path, then paused once to look back before walking on.  
Another girl hurried out from behind a tree and walked slightly  
behind her. Neither of them spoke.

"Truth," she pronounced, with contempt and pain, as she  
watched the two of them walk away. In her belly and breast,  
something stirred, and steel screamed on steel. "Hush," she  
said gently; and drew the curtains closed before she left.

"Hush."

END

Notes:

A small odd story, written because an idea wouldn't leave me  
alone, heavily inspired by many discussions I've had about Ruka  
and the motivations behind his actions with many different  
people.

As usual, story improvement of the first draft by members of the  
Fanfic Revolution.


End file.
